After spending 75 hours researching almost 70 home toolkits, testing 11 on a range of household tasks, and talking to experts about the essentials of any toolbox, we found that Home Depot’s Anvil Homeowner’s Tool Set is the best basic toolkit for most homes, apartments, or dorm rooms. No pre-assembled kits go beyond basic, light-duty tools, but this set offers the most well-rounded selection, relatively decent quality and durability, and is among the most affordable.

Buying Options

The Anvil set provides the necessary items without useless filler inflating the tool count—and the price tag—which was a common flaw we saw in competitors’ kits. Beyond a hammer, tape measure, utility knife, screwdriver, and hex wrenches, as well as adequate versions of other tools we considered essential, the Anvil kit also has one of the best adjustable wrenches we found in any kit. At one of the lowest prices of the sets we considered, the Anvil also has one of the most compact cases we found. If you need something small and basic to keep in a closet and use for occasional home repairs, this kit is a satisfying value that should last for years.

Buying Options

If the Anvil is sold out or unavailable, the WorkPro W009021A 100-Piece Kitchen Drawer Tool Kit contains nearly all of the same tools at the same quality for a similar price. It also comes with a nice zippered case that's equipped with straps to secure the tools. The drawbacks are that the kit offers only metric hex wrenches (instead of common SAE sizes) and it lacks any kind of wide-jaw pliers, so in situations where you need to hold a nut and a bolt simultaneously, the WorkPro is much more limited than the Anvil kit.

It’s important to keep in mind that both of these kits are entry-level. They’re the best of their kind, and they’re certainly better than nothing, but they aren’t designed for consistent, long-term use. We genuinely wish there were stronger pre-assembled kits to fill the vacant middle ground between the tools contractors use and these comparatively unimpressive options. If you want a better toolkit, here’s our advice: You’ll be much happier purchasing individual higher-quality tools—starting with our picks for hammer, screwdriver, and tape measure—which will get you started building a permanent collection of capable tools with better features, performance, and durability.

Since I could find no credible reviews comparing the various home toolkits, I spent a good deal of time talking to Clement and Dahl as well as hours and hours researching the offerings at Amazon, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Walmart, and many smaller regional retailers like Menards.

Who this is for

You don’t have to own a home to need a basic home toolkit. Anyone who intends to hang a picture, tighten cabinet hardware, put up a shelf or change out a lightswitch cover needs a selection of entry-level hand tools. Even a college freshman in a dorm room needs tools—kids, listen to your parents on this one.

If you already have a basic toolkit and you think your current tools aren’t cutting it, you probably won’t have much luck upgrading to a better version of a pre-assembled kit. The next step for you is to begin investing in better tools, and we have suggestions on what tools to get next if you’re ready to take on bigger projects.

How we picked

Some of the toolkits we tested. The 76-piece HDX set stands second from the right. Photo: Doug Mahoney

The most important element of any tool kit is the selection of tools. In looking at almost 70 available models, we found that each typically had certain fundamental items—usually a hammer, a tape measure, a wrench, a level, some combination of screwdrivers and bits. But beyond those essentials, the variety is stunning and often straight-up confusing. In many instances advanced tools are mixed in with the basics, seemingly at random. One kit we saw had a bare selection of tools yet managed to offer designated wire strippers. Another one lacked a standard utility knife yet provided a metal-cutting hacksaw.

“The more tools a kit has doesn’t necessarily make it better.”
—Timothy Dahl, tool blogger and founder of Built By Kids

To figure out which tools are essential in any basic kit, we asked Clement and Dahl to create their own ideal set. We did the same, and interestingly the three lists were nearly identical. We all agreed that the ideal toolkit for home use should include the following pieces (all of which we have full guides on—follow the links in the tool titles for more on each topic).

Hammer: A must for hanging pictures, pounding in the irritating sock-ripping nail that keeps working its way up, or “persuading” the gate latch to line up.

Tape measure: Essential for measuring for window blinds, figuring the square footage for painting a room, or spacing pictures on a wall.

Screwdriver and bits: Use these to tighten hinges and door knobs, straighten electrical plates, fix loose chair legs, or assemble furniture and toys. For bits, you’ll want at minimum a well-rounded selection of Phillips, slotted, square-drive, and Torx, all of which are useful around the house. It’s also good to have an extra supply of Phillips #2, as those are the most common.

Allen wrenches (SAE and metric, also known as hex wrenches or Allen keys): As Clement told us, “Allen keys are critical for the modern world we’ve built up of knock-down furniture. The more choices you have in Imperial and metric, the better off you’ll be. They’re must-haves for anyone with a bike, too. Adjust your seat, rack your handlebars straight after the crash, even fix your Baby Jogger. They’re also key for various home upgrades with set screws like toilet paper and towel holders.”

Level: This item is ideal for hanging pictures, adjusting the legs on an appliance, installing a shelf, or straightening furniture.

Needle-nose pliers: Grab a pair for small and delicate tasks like repairing jewelry or gluing tiny pieces of a broken coffee mug. This tool is also helpful when you’re working in tight places such as the inside of a motorized toy or getting melted crayons out of the floor register ducts (don’t ask).

We’ve separated those last three tools for a particular reason. Clement explains why: “I like options for turning nuts, whether that’s a kids bike, my bike, a playset tighten-up, or changing a lawnmower blade. Ratchets are cool to be sure, but a decent set of wrenches—or even adjustable-plus-locking pliers—can get most jobs done, from tightening up the rake head to the handle to loosening the garden hose.”

The tools of the Anvil set, our pick. The kit covers all of the basics. Photo: Doug Mahoney

His point is solid: a home toolkit should offer some way to handle a nut-and-bolt situation, meaning the kit should include two similar tools in the wrench/pliers category—one to turn while the other secures. This comes up when tightening two hoses together, assembling a backyard playset, and fixing an under-sink drip. So of the above three tools, you really need only two of them. You could also get away with a socket set as one of the two, but that’s less than ideal because a socket can’t grab around something the way a pair of pliers can, so if you’re working on a hose or a pipe, you’re out of luck.

With this ideal kit consisting of only nine items, our experts warned against the marketing tactics of the kit manufacturers, specifically how companies pad the number of tools included in each set. As Dahl told us, “the more tools a kit has doesn’t necessarily make it better. You’ll find 50-piece toolkits that count sockets or bits to simply inflate a number so a buyer feels like they are getting more bang for the buck—but instead they are getting a tool that they might not ever use or know how to use.” Clement agrees: “An overabundance of nut drivers and esoteric screwdriver tips is a sure sign lots of items will never leave their blow-molded bondage. Put another way, if there are lots of bits in there that look like they’d be more use ripping down a men’s-room stall at the airport, they’ll be of little use in your home.” As just one example, the Amazon Basics 115-Piece Home Repair Tool Kit has 50 screwdriver tips, 13 nut-driver tips, 18 drill bits, a six-piece combo wrench set, and 15 Allen wrenches.

We didn’t put any restrictions on cost, but even when taking a price-agnostic approach (as we did in our original version of this guide in 2013 up through a complete from-scratch overhaul in 2018), we felt the best value occurred at the lower end. To put the overall cost of very good tools in perspective, we priced out the total cost of buying every high-end hand tool on our essential tools list, and the final bill there came to about $180. Given that context, we felt $20 to $30 is a great price to pay for a case full of standard hand tools that should hold up to occasional household use. We found kits that cost up around $50 or more were typically bulked up with peripheral tools less likely to be useful. At that price, you’re better off starting to invest in contractor-grade tools.

How we tested

We pulled from the nearly 70 kits we researched between our original 2013 research and a new round of tests in 2018 and tested 11 kits (nine in 2013 and two more in 2018) due to their complete or mostly complete inclusion of our essential tools. We evaluated them for overall quality, handling and durability. We looked at both the individual tools and the kits as a whole.

To test durability, we dropped just about everything off an 8-foot step ladder onto a concrete floor. For general performance, I used the hammers to drive 3½-inch framing nails into a pressure-treated 6-by-6. I hand-turned 3-inch drywall screws into pre-drilled holes with the screwdrivers. I tightened down sill bolts with the wrenches and used the cutting edge of the pliers to clip 14/2 Romex electrical wire until my hands were sore.

Beyond these tests, my years of construction experience told me a lot about the tools just by holding and examining them. Each type of tool has certain tells that indicate quality, such as the wobble in the lower jaw of an adjustable wrench, the amount of flex in the pliers handles, and the difficulty of using the locking lever on a tape measure. Overall, the tools held up very well under the stress that I put them through, and nearly everything survived repeated drop tests.

I tightened down sill bolts with the wrenches and used the cutting edge of the pliers to clip 14/2 Romex electrical wire until my hands were sore.

We also conducted long-term testing with our original picks, having used them now, off and on, for nearly five years. For this, we simply kept them on the basement shelf and used them around the house as needed; hanging pictures, assembling furniture, and all of the other odds and ends that basic home tool kits are asked to do. Using the tools in this kind of setting further familiarized us with their benefits and limitations.

Buying Options

After all of our research, testing and evaluation, we feel the best home tool kit is the Anvil Homeowner’s Tool Set. It’s a relatively small kit—the case is among the most compact we tested—but it has all of the right tools. The components look and feel nice, they work well enough, and they can stand up to light-duty usage (with one exception). The Anvil set is also one of the least expensive kits we looked at, and it’s simply a great value. No other kit has such a complete selection of tools at such a low price. With one slight difference, this set is simply a rebranded version of the HDX Homeowner’s Tool Set, which has been our pick since 2013 until it was recently discontinued.

For starters, the Anvil kit has the one of the best adjustable wrenches of any kit we tested, and that tool alone sets this product apart. It has a large padded handle for leverage, and the jaw can open to just over an inch, so it can tighten most plumbing hardware in an emergency—most other toolkits’ wrenches are either much smaller or missing the padded handle. You also get a padded handle on the kit’s slip-joint pliers, and the two tools make a great team when you’re working with nuts and bolts and using them together to tighten the connection.

Next, the Anvil has a lot of screwdriving ability, coming with a driver handle and 30 driver bits. That’s a lot, but it isn’t overkill, as you have a good selection of slotted (five), Phillips (10), Torx (five), and Allen (nine) bits, plus a ¼-inch adapter for a socket set. This collection covers every screw you’re likely to find at home, and it also provides a few extras of the most common sizes. You also get a wide selection of traditional L-shaped Allen wrenches: 11 metric and 11 SAE, which is more than most sets offer. This stands in contrast to some overpriced kits we considered, which often use an excessive bit selection to pad the tool count (and price) with accessories you rarely need.

No other kit has such a complete selection of tools at such a low price.

The rest of the tools are typical of these sets and are about as good as the tools found in sets that cost more. The hammer is small but durable with its fiberglass handle. The 12-foot tape measure locks easily and has a rubberized sheath to help absorb the impact from any falls. The utility knife works fine and comes with a small case that holds five additional utility knife blades (which make up five of the 76 pieces in the kit).

Beyond those essential tools, the Anvil kit also includes a pair of scissors, four spring clamps, and a four-piece precision screwdriver set (Phillips #00, #0, and slotted 3/32 and 1/8). The precision drivers can tighten sunglasses and open a toy battery case. The scissors and clamps are forgettable. The one difference between the Anvil and the older HDX kit is that the Anvil comes with a funny little bottle opener that has a ¼-inch hex end, making it compatible with the screwdriver handle. The HDX kit came with a set of wire cutters. The wire cutters never impressed us too much (other than the name), so we feel this is a fine trade-off.

The Anvil case is compact and easily tucked into the back of a closet. Photo: Doug Mahoney

Because the Anvil kit has no overabundance of additional tools, the closed case is compact and ideal for closet storage. With the plastic latches fastened, it measures 13 by 10¾ by 3 inches. It’s among the smallest sets we tested, requiring just over 419 cubic inches of closet space, about the size of a chubby laptop. In contrast, the Harbor Freight case is a sizable 22 inches long and occupies a total of almost 640 cubic inches. Denali’s duffel has the benefit of being crushed into place, but even at its smallest, it still takes up about 720 cubic inches. The Craftsman Evolv’s tackle-box case takes up 557 cubic inches. The Apollo 53-piece Household Tool Kit and our runner-up, the WorkPro 100-Piece Kitchen Drawer Tool Kit, are a hair smaller than the Anvil kit, but those sets have a more limited selection of tools.

Long-term test notes

For five years, I’ve been using our previous pick, the HDX toolkit (which is the same as the Anvil), mostly for small tasks like cabinet-door adjustments and towel-bar tightening. For such low-key uses, these tools have been fine. I haven’t noticed any problems with the core tools, specifically keeping an eye on the screwdriver handle that some Home Depot customers have complained about. We’ll continue using the newer Anvil kit for other light-duty home tasks and will report back on any problems we find.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The case of the Anvil is functional but has its annoyances. It opens like a book, with the tools pressure-fit into both sides. Each tool has a specific spot and can’t fit anywhere else. This design makes the case well-organized but eliminates the option of adding tools later, replacing tools with those of different brands, or storing a few picture hangers, a roll of duct tape, or a can of WD-40 with the rest of your tools. The tool-gripping slots inside the Anvil case have a strong enough grab to mostly keep the items in place, but they’re not so tight that the pieces are hard to remove. Still, from time to time, one fell out while we were closing the case, which got a little frustrating. Most of the kits with this kind of pressure-fit case were far worse in this regard. The Husky 123-Piece Multi-Purpose Tool Set (now discontinued) held its tools so securely that at times I had to pry them out with a screwdriver. At the other end of the spectrum, the case of Harbor Freight’s Pittsburgh 130 Pc Tool Set with Case held the tools with almost no grip at all, which caused the entire socket selection to fall out as we tried to close it up.

The case is secured with two clips, one on each side, and they’re a potential weak point. They were sometimes tough to snap closed and we’ve gotten reports of them breaking off entirely. Ours have held up fine, but it’s something to watch.

For specific tools, the torpedo level is really poor quality—just bottom of the barrel. It’s a little plastic thing that you can easily twist with your hands. Levels are all about the stability of the bubble vial, and something this flimsy is going to have accuracy issues. I checked it against my 4-foot Sola level, a high-end pro brand, and it was 1/16 of an inch out of level over 9 inches. That translates to just over 5/16 of an inch across 4 feet—a lot for any kind of precision work. Given the quality of the other tools and the Anvil kit’s overall rock-bottom pricing, we’re willing to overlook this dud, especially given that most other kits don’t do any better.

The Anvil kit also comes with low-quality scissors that are uncomfortable to use. Every pair of cheap kitchen-drawer scissors I’ve ever cut with felt better than these. It’s not an essential tool and, to be honest, it’s a puzzling addition, so the fact that it’s not good doesn’t bother us.

Also included are four small spring clamps, made entirely out of plastic. We found them to be useful here and there, but during our use of the HDX kit, all four broke during the second year, so don’t expect too much out of these. Larger, better-built spring clamps can be incredibly useful. Home Depot has 2-inch Anvil ones for a dollar each, so they’re easy to stock up on.

The overall durability of the Anvil tools is worth exploring a little more. The bottom line is that all of these kits, even the more expensive ones, offer a lot of gear at a low price. For the most part, the tools in these kits are not manufactured to the most exacting of standards. They’re usually durable enough for light-duty household tasks, but nothing we tested is even close to being called “high-quality.” To put the Anvil’s price and quality in perspective, think about it this way: One pair of 8-inch Klein Journeyman Pliers, an excellent example of construction-grade long-nose pliers, costs about $35 at the time of writing, considerably more than the entire Anvil set.

Finally, there’s no real guarantee on the product. In general, only the kits with price tags in the $100 range come with any kind of warranty beyond a standard 30-day store return policy. That said, upon purchasing a kit, you should take it home and give each tool—specifically the screwdriver—a little workout to at least find any blatant manufacturer errors before the return window closes.

Buying Options

If the Anvil kit is unavailable, we also like the WorkPro W009021A 100-Piece Kitchen Drawer Tool Kit. The overall quality of the tools is on par with that of the Anvil kit, but the tool selection isn’t as good. We like that this WorkPro set comes with a nice, soft case with straps that hold the tools securely in place.

The WorkPro 100-Piece Kitchen Drawer Tool Kit contains all of the required tools but has a limited setup for nuts and bolts. You’ll find a nice adjustable wrench (identical to the one in the Anvil kit), but other than that, the kit has only a small socket set, compatible with the included screwdriver. The Anvil kit has a pair of slip-joint pliers—a tool that the WorkPro kit lacks—which can cradle a much larger bolt and grab it from the side, and turn it more easily than you can with, say, a screwdriver. So basically, this WorkPro kit will work in a lot of situations, but not as many as the Anvil kit.

Another drawback to the WorkPro kit is that the tape measure is only 10 feet long. We expected it to be at least 12 feet, like the one in the Anvil kit. It still works fine, but in some situations, such as dealing with a 12-foot board or measuring the square footage of a room for a painting project, getting an accurate measurement might require an extra step.

The case of the WorkPro 100-Piece Kitchen Drawer Tool Kit is compact and easy to deal with. Unlike the Anvil case, this one is a zippered soft case, so it’s easier to wedge into a tight closet. Inside the case are elastics and Velcro straps to secure each tool.

If you want a better toolkit, just get better tools

Some of the Anvil tools (at left in each pair) compared to their pro-grade counterparts (at right). If you’re going to be using your tools with any regularity, it’s worth investing in premium tools. Photo: Doug Mahoney

We spent a long time looking for a premade toolkit that we could recommend to anyone who wants a higher-quality option than our other picks. We came close to recommending the WorkPro W009036A 156-Piece Home Repairing Tool Set, but it has some considerable compromises, so for anyone comfortable with its approximately $60 price tag, we decided we’d sooner recommend beginning a collection of higher-quality individual tools instead. For roughly the same cost, the first three we’d suggest are the items we recommend in our guides to the best hammer, screwdriver, and tape measure. Not only will they last longer, they’ll make it easier for you to do better work, which is an argument we’d make to any DIY buyer taking on serious enough home projects to be seeking the smartest long-term investment in good tools.

We would be thrilled if we could actually find a high-quality premade kit out there—because, honestly, why isn’t there one? Stanley could put together an amazing collection of hand tools just by picking the best options out of its existing lineup. Instead, what Stanley does offer in this realm is far below its potential. It’s missing standard tools—it doesn’t even have an adjustable wrench—and the quality isn’t close to what we’ve come to expect from their name. The level, like all the rest, is plastic and inaccurate, and the screwdriver design suffers from trying to double as a socket driver. The hammer is better than what’s found in most pre-assembled kits and the tape measure isn’t bad either, but it’s nothing close to their flagship PowerLock tape measure.

Overall, Stanley’s kit is a disappointing product from a company that we feel could do better with minimal effort. Some of the tools in this kit, like the pliers and tape measure are sold individually, typically for about $5 or $6—basically their least expensive, lowest-quality tools. Were they, or any other company, to put together a full collection of quality tools at a reasonable price, that kit would fill a huge gap for those who want to engage with their tools and who will appreciate a higher level of durability and better ergonomics but who aren’t ready to take the full plunge into the much more expensive pro-level gear.

We searched, but unfortunately no basic toolkit is offered by other prominent hand-tool manufacturers like Irwin, Channellock, DeWalt, or Milwaukee. So as it stands, there is simply no middle ground between these generally unimpressive kits and the tools that contractors use.

The competition

In 2018, we tested the Stanley 65-piece Homeowner’s Tool Kit, which has a tremendous amount of positive feedback at Amazon. The kit has its high points—a decent 13-ounce hammer and 16-foot tape measure—but it has just a small socket set and slip-joint pliers for the nut-and-bolt situation. There is no adjustable wrench and the sockets are only in SAE sizing (no metric), so it’s very limited. Most of the tools show a slight added durability (except for the level, which is terrible like all the rest), but they’re still not on par with the majority of Stanley’s standalone tools like the PowerLock tape measure.

The Denali 115-Piece Home Repair Tool Kit was a previous upgrade pick due to the nice tool selection and slightly higher build quality, but it consistently went out of stock for months at a time and then for years. It is now officially listed as discontinued. A very similar kit under the AmazonBasics line appeared in 2018. We attempted to order it for testing, but after multiple delays spanning weeks, we finally cancelled the order. It has since disappeared entirely from Amazon’s site. If it was available with any consistency, we would definitely take a closer look at it.

The Anvil 137-Piece Homeowner’s Tool Set (previously branded as the HDX 137-Piece Homeowner’s Tool Set) is typically sold for almost $75. There are some high points, such as the 25-foot tape measure and the big adjustable wrench, but the rest of the tools are similar in quality to those of the less-expensive kits. This kit also has no utility knife, which is a big omission, and the folding plastic case is large and awkward to deal with.

The Apollo Precision Tools DT9408 53-Piece Household Tool Kit is similar in quality to the small Anvil kit but has less of a selection. It offers no utility knife, and you can do the nut-and-bolt combo only with a small adjustable wrench and a set of four combination wrenches that just barely go over half an inch in size, making it very limited. It does have a voltage tester, which is nice, but that one tool isn’t enough to lift the Apollo kit above the more comprehensive Anvil kit.

The Durabuilt 201 Piece Hand Tool Set omits a utility knife and also has a limited nut-and-bolt option (a small adjustable wrench and a small pair of slip-joint pliers). It comes with a selection of thumbtacks, pushpins, and picture-hanging gear. The picture hangers are functional, but for any important wall hangings, we strongly recommend purchasing 30-pound Floreats. The Durabuilt set is the only other low-priced kit we seriously considered—but given its lack of an essential tool like a utility knife and its weaker nut-and-bolt tool combo, we believe that the Anvil kit, for the same price, is simply a better option.

Kobalt also has the much-larger 230-piece Household Tool Set with Soft Case, but it typically costs well over $200, far above the cost of everything else. It comes with a wider selection of tools, including a full socket set. But the price is too high and the quality doesn’t match it. At that cost, you could get contractor-grade versions of all of our essential tools and still have a little left over.